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Pete Wilson
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Peter Barton Wilson (born August 23, 1933) is an American politician from California. Wilson served as the Republican thirty-sixth Governor of California (1991–1999), the culmination of more than three decades in the public arena that included eight years as a United States Senator (1983–1991), eleven years as Mayor of San Diego (1971–1982) and five years as a California State Assemblyman (1967–1971). On September 27, 2007, Wilson endorsed Rudy Giuliani for United States President.
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Peter Barton Wilson (born August 23, 1933) is an American politician from California. Wilson served as the Republican thirty-sixth Governor of California (1991–1999), the culmination of more than three decades in the public arena that included eight years as a United States Senator (1983–1991), eleven years as Mayor of San Diego (1971–1982) and five years as a California State Assemblyman (1967–1971). On September 27, 2007, Wilson endorsed Rudy Giuliani for United States President. On February 4, 2008, Wilson endorsed John McCain as candidate for U.S. Presidency.
Early life
Peter Barton Wilson was born August 23, 1933, in Lake Forest, Illinois, an affluent suburb north of Chicago. His parents were James Boone Wilson and Margaret Callaghan. His father was originally a jewelry salesman who later became a successful advertising executive. The Wilson family moved to St. Louis when Pete was in junior high school. There he attended St. Louis Country Day School, an exclusive private institution, where he won an award in his senior year for combined scholarship, athletics and citizenship. In the fall of 1952 Wilson enrolled at Yale University, where he majored in English, earned his B.A., pledged the Zeta Psi fraternity and received a Marines ROTC scholarship.
After graduation from Yale, Wilson served three years in the Marine Corps as an infantry officer, eventually becoming a platoon commander. Upon completion of his military obligation, Wilson earned a law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1962, while working for Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard M. Nixon, Wilson got to know one of Nixon's top aides, Herb Klein. Klein suggested that Wilson might do well in San Diego politics, and in 1963 Wilson moved to San Diego.
He began his practice as a criminal defense attorney in San Diego, but found such work to be low-paying and personally repugnant—as he later commented to the Los Angeles Times, "I realized I couldn't be a criminal defense lawyer because most of the people who do come to you are guilty." Wilson switched to a more conventional law practice and continued his activity in local politics, working for Barry Goldwater's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1964. Wilson's like for politics and managing the day-to-day details of the political process was growing. He put in long hours for the Goldwater campaign, earning the friendship of local Republican boosters so necessary for a political career, and in 1966, at the age of thirty-three, he ran for and won a seat in the California state legislature succeeding Clair Burgener.
Mayor of San Diego
As mayor of San Diego, Wilson helmed the city as it transformed from a quiet navy town to an international trade hub, credited with amending the city charter to make public safety the first and foremost responsibility of city government and leading an effort to manage San Diego's dynamic growth and to revitalize the city's downtown area. He substantially cut the property tax rate and imposed a limit on the growth of the city budget that became a model for California's subsequently adopted Proposition 13. Wilson was largely responsible for beginning the downtown transformation of the Gaslamp Quarter from a drug infested area to a highly business friendly and successful downtown. Wilson coined the slogan for San Diego, which is still widely used today: "San Diego: America's finest city"
United States Senator
In 1982, Wilson won the Republican primary in California to replace retiring senator S.I. Hayakawa. His Democratic opponent was outgoing two term governor Jerry Brown. Wilson was known as a fiscal conservative who supported Proposition 13 while Brown opposed it. However, Brown ran on his record as governor of building the largest state budget surpluses in California history. Both Wilson and Brown were moderate to liberal on social issues, including support for abortion rights. The election was expected to be close, with Brown holding a slim lead in most polls leading up to election day. Wilson hammered away at Brown's appointment of liberal California Chief Justice Rose Bird, using this to portray himself as tougher on crime than Brown. Brown's late entry into the 1980 Democratic Presidential primary, after promising he would not run was also an issue. Finally, President Ronald Reagan made a number of visits to California late in the race to campaign for Wilson. Reagan stated that the last thing he wanted to see was one of his home state's senate seats fall into Democratic hands, especially to be occupied by the man that succeeded him as governor. Despite exit polls indicating a narrow Brown victory, Wilson edged him out to win the election. A major factor may also have been a late influx of the Armenian vote in the California governor's race between George Deukmejian and Tom Bradley. Many of these votes came from Fresno and the Central Valley which were heavily Republican; these same voters who voted for Deukmejian for Governor also voted for Wilson.
As a United States senator from 1983 to 1991, Wilson was a vocal proponent for a stronger, more military-based defense and U.S. foreign policy. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he called for early implementation of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, a national ballistic missile defense system.
Wilson also cosponsored the federal Intergovernmental Regulatory Relief Act requiring the federal government to reimburse states for the cost of new federal mandates. A fiscal conservative, he was named the Senate's for each of his eight years in the nation's capital.
Governor of California
Pete Wilson was elected governor in 1990, defeating former San Francisco mayor Diane Feinstein.
Wilson's eight years as governor saw California go into a strong economic recovery. Inheriting the state's worst economy since the Great Depression, Wilson insisted on strict budget discipline and worked to rehabilitate the state's environment for investment and new job creation. His term saw market-based, unsubsidized health coverage made available for employees of small businesses and additional anti-fraud measures credited for reducing workers' compensation premiums by as much as 40 percent.
Wilson also enacted education reforms focused on creating curricular standards, reducing class sizes and replacing social promotion with early remedial education. Wilson also promoted additional programs for individualized testing of all students, teacher competency training, a lengthier instructional year, and programs focusing on a return to phonics and early mastery of early reading, writing and mathematical skills.
Wilson led efforts to enact tougher, and often considered extreme, crime measures and signed into law the controversial "Three Strikes," (25 years to life for repeat felons) and "One Strike," (25 years to life upon the first conviction of aggravated rape or child molestation.) He also resumed the death penalty in California, after 25 years of moratorium, with the execution of Robert Alton Harris in April 1992. A total of 5 people were executed under his administration (first two by gas chamber, three by lethal injection).
Wilson spoke at the funeral services for Richard M. Nixon in Yorba Linda in 1994. Two years later, he became, to date, the most recent governor to preside over a gubernatorial funeral, that being of Pat Brown.
In Wilson's 1994 successful campaign for re-election against Kathleen Brown, his two signature issues were his opposition to the billions spent by the State funding services for illegal immigrants and the race based quota components of Affirmative Action. Support for the overwhelmingly popular Prop 187 helped give him a landslide win.
For most of his time as governor, Wilson reduced per-capita infrastructure spending for California, much as he had done as mayor of San Diego. Many construction projects - most notably highway expansion/improvement projects - were severely hindered or delayed, while other maintenance and construction projects were abandoned completely.
While his decision to merge the California State Police into the California Highway Patrol (CHP) was applauded by some as a better way to spend money, the CHP was severely limited in enforcement capacity by a minimal budget, which would not be restored until successor Gray Davis took office in 1999. Wilson remains a champion for tough-on-crime laws supported by state-wide law enforcement.
Wilson left California with a $16 billion dollar surplus.
Term limits passed by voters, Proposition 140, and championed by Wilson, in 1990 prohibited Wilson from running for reelection to a third term.
In October 1999, he was given the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution. Wilson was recognized for his 40 years of public service to the state and the country.
Energy deregulation and the roots of the California energy crisis
As Governor, Wilson championed deregulation of California's electricity markets. The resulting law, AB1890, was unanimously passed by the Democratically-controlled State legislature and signed in 1996. The law guaranteed reduced rates for residential consumers through the end of Wilson's second term as Governor. The law required that utilities purchase electricity for sale to residential customers on the spot market, forbidding long term contracts to smooth out price spikes.
During the energy crisis, as a Hoover fellow, Wilson authored an article titled "What California Must Do" that blamed Gray Davis for not building enough power plants. Wilson defended his record of power plant construction and stated that between 1985 and 1988, 23 plants were certified and 18 were built in California . The San Francisco Chronicle contradicted this claim in a 2001 article that claimed that no new facilities had been built in the last decade . The graphs Wilson provided in his article showed that Davis had approved twice as many new power plant capacity in Davis' first three years as Governor as Wilson's eight years. The Governor Gray Davis Digital Library contends that Davis' energy policies during his governorship resulted in 38 power plants, totaling 14,365 MW .
Wilson acknowledged that he had not anticipated the large growth in energy demand . While Davis blamed Wilson for the energy deregulation plan he rarely acknowledges the fact that he voted, along with 100% of the California legislature, to deregulate the State's electricity market. In 2003, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded that the energy crisis was caused by poorly structured energy deregulation and market manipulation that was allowed under deregulation.
Run for US President
Wilson also ran for President in the 1996 election, making major announcements on both the east and west coasts. Wilson announced first in New York City, at Battery Park, with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop. He completed a cross-country tour, with his west coast announcement at the Los Angeles Police Academy.
The Wilson campaign had problems from the start. After deciding to run, he almost immediately had throat surgery that kept him from announcing--or even talking--for months. His campaign lasted a month and a day and left him with a million dollars in campaign debt.
Banking, teaching and corporate advisory career
After leaving office, Wilson spent two years as a managing director of Pacific Capital Group, a merchant bank based in Los Angeles, California. He serves as a director of the Irvine Company, the U.S. Telepacific Corporation, Inc., National Information Consortium Inc., an advisor to , and IDT Entertainment. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of Thomas Weisel Partners, a San Francisco merchant bank. He also served as chairman of the Japan Task Force of the , which produced an analysis of Japanese economic and national security prospects over the next decade entitled “Can Japan Come Back?” Wilson is currently a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank affiliated with Stanford University, the , the Richard M. Nixon the , is the founding director of the and is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the . Wilson sits on two prestigious federal advisory committees, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee. He currently works as a consultant at the Los Angeles office of Bingham McCutchen LLP, a large, national law firm.
In 2003, Wilson was co-chair of the campaign of Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Gray Davis as governor of California. In 2007, a statue of Wilson joined Ernest Hahn and Alonzo Horton on what has been dubbed the San Diego Walk of Fame. At the unveiling, Wilson said “View this statue, as I will, as a surrogate recipient of the tribute that's deserved by all of you who shared the dream, who made it come true and gave all the proud neighborhoods of San Diego the vibrant heart they needed.”
Wilson is married, has two step children and five grandchildren, and lives in Los Angeles, California.
He is of no relation to the late San Francisco television news anchor of the same name.
See also
External links
News articles
Campaign literature and videos
Miscellaneous
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